UK Car Industry

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Wednesday 17th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

If levelling up is to be more than just a slogan, we desperately need an industrial strategy that matches historical skills to new job opportunities. I want to impress on the Minister that, in 2002, Oldham Batteries in Denton closed for the last time. It made car batteries for a long time. It had been a company since 1894, but those skills are still there in Tameside. How do we match up future job opportunities that the green transport revolution brings to those skills that still exist in areas such as Denton and Tameside?

[Ms Ghani]

I am grateful for the hon. Member’s point. There is no doubt a huge amount of skills in his constituency and it is absolutely right that he is coming here to represent them today. I have spoken about the Faraday battery challenge, which is about using new technology to ensure that we are producing the best batteries with the longest lifecycle. Forgive me; he is absolutely right: I should have mentioned the national electrification skills framework. That project is being continued by the Faraday battery challenge. It looks at the skills needed today, tomorrow and even further going down the line to ensure that these jobs and opportunities are spread across the UK. If he would allow, I am more than happy to write to him and to make sure, if it does not already, that that part of the Faraday challenge covers his region, too.

Civil Service Impartiality

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Monday 6th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Quin]

I have said what I said about the Government considering how the procedures for business appointments could be improved. I have a lot of faith in the ACOBA process, and in Lord Pickles and his committee. We look forward to him looking through this process. Sue Gray will put through her application—if that is a confidential process, I presume that it is happening—and the committee will need to take a decision on that basis and then provide advice.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

The faux outrage and wild conspiracies from the Conservative party are kidding nobody. I remind the Minister of the words of a predecessor of his as Cabinet Office Minister, the noble Lord Maude, who said that he had worked with Sue Gray for five years and never had the

“slightest reason to question either her integrity or her political impartiality”.

He added that the Leader of the Opposition is

“fortunate to have secured her services”.

He is right, isn’t he?

[Jeremy Quin]

The hon. Gentleman obviously knows faux outrage when he sees it; he has a long experience of seeing it, in the mirror. I am grateful to him for reminding me of the words of my predecessor as Minister for the Cabinet Office and, indeed, as the Member of Parliament for Horsham. I, too, have worked with Sue Gray. I have admired her advice and have had no reason to question her integrity. That does not mean, however, that this is the way we should conduct things in these circumstances. I am very disappointed in the actions of the Labour party. I am very disappointed in how this has come through, and there are real concerns about the impact that it may have on the perception of impartiality more broadly.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

3. What recent assessment he has made of the level of compliance with the ministerial code.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

17. What recent assessment he has made of the level of compliance with the ministerial code.

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Oliver Dowden)]

The Prime Minister expects all Ministers to act in accordance with the code and demonstrate integrity, professionalism and accountability. He has appointed Sir Laurie Magnus as the independent adviser on Ministers’ interests to advise on matters relating to the code.

[Oliver Dowden]

I am sure the hon. Lady was in the House yesterday and heard what the Prime Minister said, which was that as soon as he became aware of formal complaints against the Deputy Prime Minister, he took action. That action involved appointing Adam Tolley, who is a very experienced employment KC, to look into those allegations. It is appropriate that we have a proper process, and the trigger for a proper process is a formal complaint.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

It is all fine and well to talk about a “proper process”, but there are reports that staff working for the Deputy Prime Minister felt physically sick and even suicidal as a result of the alleged bullying. Does the Minister accept that in any other workplace the Deputy Prime Minister would have been suspended, pending investigation? Why is it one rule for the Deputy Prime Minister and one rule for workers anywhere else?

[Oliver Dowden]

The Government take any complaints of bullying and harassment very seriously. That is precisely why the Prime Minister appointed Adam Tolley to conduct this investigation. Opposition Members have constantly asked me when we are going to appoint an independent adviser so that we can have a proper process, and now that we have appointed one and we have a proper process, they say that we should perfunctorily sack the person. They cannot have it both ways.

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[The Minister for Veterans’ Affairs (Johnny Mercer)]

Of course. The whole point of those surveys was that, when we set up the Office for Veterans’ Affairs and I came into this job, we were starting from a very poor position on data. We managed to get the question into the census to understand how many veterans we have in this country, and the ONS study that my hon. Friend mentioned increases the granularity of that data, to really understand what the challenges are for people transitioning. I am confident that the services provided now are much better than they were, but we are always looking to learn and I will look closely at the results of the survey.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

Public procurement rules are the responsibility of the Cabinet Office. With the Procurement Bill, the Government are seeking to extend the scope of Government contracts to small and medium-sized enterprises, but I have always firmly believed that we also need to extend the number of advanced and higher-level apprenticeships as part of public procurement, so what more are the Government doing to get those high-level apprenticeships linked to contracts?

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Alex Burghart)]

As a former Minister for apprenticeships, I share the hon. Gentleman’s enthusiasm. If he wishes to find out more about the Procurement Bill, he can join me and the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) in Committee Room 10 on Tuesdays and Thursdays for the foreseeable future. He will hear us talk about social benefit and the social value embedded within it, and I hope apprentices will be part of that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I thank my hon. Friend, who is absolutely right to focus on the data. We are doing this because it gives offenders a chance to turn their lives around, but we also know that getting offenders into work can cut reoffending by up to 9 percentage points, which keeps our streets safer. We publish a range of data—there is the justice data lab, and we review international evidence—and we will certainly publish as much as we can on the Government’s website so the analysis he talks about can take place.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

But the Secretary of State must know that staff shortages in the probation service are leading to dangerously high levels of workload for the existing staff, who are then leaving in droves, creating a vicious circle against rehabilitation, putting staff at risk and also potentially the public. It has led to the chief inspector of the probation service saying his service is in crisis mode. What is the Secretary of State going to do to break this vicious circle?

[Dominic Raab]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that the people who work in the prison and probation services are critical to driving down reoffending. We have an independent pay review body that looks at these things, which we have supported and engaged with precisely to make sure we get the balance right. We have increased funding for the probation service by an additional £155 million a year to help recruitment, and the reforms we have introduced since 2010 are working. We have reduced the overall reoffending rate from 31% under Labour to 25.6% under this Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend is a doughty champion of the proper expenditure of taxpayers’ money, which we always remember it is; the Government have no funds of their own. We have announced significant efforts on the counter-fraud service, most recently with the announcement on the public sector fraud authority, which is part of a wider programme of £750 million. That spending is not a virtue in itself, but £1 spent fighting fraud brings a proper, bankable return to taxpayers by bringing wrongdoers to justice and getting money back, and that is what we will continue to do.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

I could not agree more with the Minister. Let us have a bankable return for the taxpayer, because the Public Accounts Committee has found that £4.9 billion of money given in bounce back loans is fraudulent. What is he doing to get almost £5 billion back for the taxpayer?

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[The Minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)]

My hon. Friend tempts me, but I remind him that the Government speak with one voice. What I will say is that yesterday there was a meeting between Ministers and the Secretary of State for Transport. His Department has, I think, 375 bits of retained EU law, and he is tackling those with great enthusiasm. We need to ensure that people know what the rules are, so that they can point to one and ask, “Is this really necessary?” and I am working with all Departments to do that.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

T8. As a former member of the Home Affairs Committee, I still take great interest in its work. I am reliably informed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) that yesterday the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration told the Committee that he had asked to meet the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to talk about the cross-Government approach to channel crossings and had been refused a meeting, and that the Home Secretary had cancelled requested meetings with him six times. Is this an acceptable approach to such a serious issue, and when will there be a meeting?

[Steve Barclay]

One of the purposes of Cabinet Office questions is to enable Ministers to respond to issues as they arise. Obviously I have a range of external meetings that reflect the responsibilities that we have discussed in the House, not least my roundtable on food security and resilience, an issue that was raised earlier. As for the wider approach to illegal immigration, that is a policy matter for the Home Secretary, who leads external engagement on the issue, but of course the Cabinet Office plays a supporting role in relation to Home Office colleagues.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

My hon. Friend is right to raise that issue. We do understand how difficult the trend away from cash and towards cards and digital payments can be. I have seen that in my own constituency with repeated closures of rural bank branches, which force vulnerable customers into more difficult situations, so I thank him for raising it. The ability to transact cash remains important to millions of people. We cannot force the rural branches to remain open, but we will legislate to protect access to cash. The Government plan to introduce legislation in the Financial Services and Markets Bill to support the continued use of cash in people’s daily lives, but he will be pleased to know that it will also help local businesses to continue accepting cash by ensuring access to deposit facilities.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

My constituents will have listened with bewilderment to the Minister’s replies to other Members. This Government have been in office for 12 years now. She talks about tackling regional inequalities. Over those 12 years, child poverty has increased, pensioner poverty has increased, the gap between the richest and the poorest has increased, and life expectancy has stalled and in some areas gone backwards. Which of those achievements is she most proud of?

[Kemi Badenoch]

I am proud of this Government’s achievements. The hon. Gentleman has been very selective in picking data that requires a different baseline of years. I am afraid to say that he is wrong. We have been levelling up the country, and, as we announced in the levelling up White Paper, the Government will continue to do so—for example using the £1.4 billion global Britain investment fund to attract major investments, such as the new £2 billion Britishvolt gigafactory in Northumberland. We are doing a lot across the country to level up and we will continue to do so.

Sue Gray Report

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

That is a matter for the chair.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

To those MPs who have clearly gone for their lunch, may I advise them that the Prime Minister’s humble pie is off? Was the Prime Minister at the party on 18 December 2020—the so-called wine and cheese evening that lasted for five hours, where red wine was “spilled on one wall”, it was “crowded and noisy”, and a cleaner was forced to clean up afterwards. Was he at it, at any stage of the proceedings?

[The Prime Minister]

I think the hon. Gentleman will find the answer to that question in Sue Gray’s report.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[James Cartlidge]

My hon. Friend, who is a champion for his constituents, makes the important point that these are increasingly important matters in the current economic context. That is why we have committed to ensuring that specialist legal advice services continue to provide support for those who need it most, and it is why, in particular, we will be spending £5 million to pilot early legal advice on social welfare matters, including debt, this summer. Throughout 2020 we provided £5.4 million of grant funding to not-for-profit providers of legal advice, supporting more than 70 organisations to help vulnerable people resolve their legal problems. I am pleased to confirm that those rounds of funding provided more than £130,000 to Northampton Community Law Service.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

From the Minister’s answers, we might think everything is rosy in the world of legal aid, but the reality is that there are legal aid deserts in many parts of the country where practitioners have packed up and stopped providing vital access to the justice system. What is the Minister doing to ensure that, in every part of England, there is fair access to legal aid?

[James Cartlidge]

That is a fair question, but I do not accept that there are areas of the country where people are denied access to justice because there are no legal aid providers. The Legal Aid Agency keeps market capacity under constant review and takes immediate action where gaps appear by tendering for new providers and amending contractual requirements to encourage new providers into the market. In England and Wales, legal advice on housing matters is available, wherever people are, through the Civil Legal Advice telephone service.

On access to legal aid, as I said, we are consulting on proposals that will increase the number of people who can access civil legal aid by 2 million, which is a significant measure.

Referral of Prime Minister to Committee of Privileges

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Thursday 21st April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

Listening to this debate, I am reminded of the Conservative party leadership election during the summer of 2019. I was surprised that a number of my constituents approached me to ask who I thought should become leader. I said, in all honesty, that I really hoped that it would be the right hon. Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt), because I feared what might otherwise happen, and I believe that our country must always come first.

Whether we are Back Benchers or Front Benchers, and whether we are Government or Opposition Members, we must be steadfast in our commitment to the truth and the principles of the law. That is certainly the case for the person occupying the most powerful elected position in the land—that of Prime Minister, a great public office that has been respected for centuries, but which is, we fear, in danger of being debased. The position of Prime Minister is the most elevated of all. The public always has and always will look up to it for leadership, and throughout the pandemic we have seen how important the roles of the Government and the Prime Minister are. The public looked to them not just for leadership, but for how to behave. The public have reacted to what has happened with ridicule. We have seen the memes online, and we have seen and heard children talking online about the Boris parties.

This is a question of the Government’s credibility. Virtually every night, the public watched their screens or listened to their radios to hear the Prime Minister tell them—he implored them—how to behave. They also saw the advertisements telling them to obey the rules. Then for months we had rumours and speculation about how the Prime Minister had behaved, but the Government’s counterpoint was that he had not misled Parliament or the public. That resulted in a corrosion of public trust and a change in behaviour. It became almost impossible to reverse what was happening in society because, given the behaviour of the Prime Minister and the Government, people did not trust or believe what was being said.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

The issue of trust is the important point that we have to consider today. The public have made their mind up. We have seen the opinion polls, and it is overwhelmingly clear that the public do not trust the Prime Minister in these affairs. This is also about trust in this House. If we are not able to police our own rules and bring to task those who break them, whoever they are, the resulting lack of public trust will damage not just the holder of the office of Prime Minister but all of us.

[Matt Western]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. He is absolutely right. This notion of trust is so fragile and so precious. For those who were around in the 2000s, in the run-up to the expenses scandal and other issues that have affected this House, the primacy of trust in this place is critical to how it operates.

If we are to restore faith and trust in this place, we cannot defend the indefensible. The Government tried that with the Owen Paterson affair. I really felt for Conservative Members, the Back Benchers particularly, who were humiliated by what they were led through by the Prime Minister. We must restore the standards and principles of this place and we must have adhesion to the ministerial code, which has to be brought on to a different legal setting.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Thursday 31st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

Many moons ago, after the global financial crash, Tameside Council developed an initiative called “Tameside Works First”, which was a way of circumnavigating the then Official Journal of the European Union rules on public procurement and meant that the council could award far more contracts to local companies, massively benefiting those local companies. We do not have OJEU rules any more, so I would like to offer Tameside Works First to the Minister. Let us have a Britain Works First initiative and encourage local government and central Government to do more to award contracts to British companies.

[Steve Barclay]

The hon. Gentleman raises a legitimate point. We have all seen in our communities that local businesses often have a pride in the service they give because it is within their locale and they know the local school, business or hospital involved. Their own workforce have an interaction with it, so it is not just about the quality of the service, but the pride in what they are delivering. That is not always reflected in simple tender prices that are bid. It is very much at the heart of the procurement legislation that we look at social value, for example, how many disabled employees a bidding company has. We need to consider that wider social value, looking at issues such as food miles and quality, not simply at the money that is bid. This is also part of having a more transparent, accessible and simple process that enables SMEs such as the ones to which he alludes to take part in those contracts.

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[The Minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this important question. The Brexit freedoms Bill will modernise the UK’s approach to making regulations by enabling Her Majesty’s Government effectively to amend, repeal or replace any retained EU law. These reforms will help cut business costs by removing EU red tape and creating a UK-centric regulatory framework that encourages competition, innovation and growth. The Bill will also help accelerate the excellent work of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman) to deliver the recommendations from the taskforce for innovation, growth and regulatory reform in the fields of technology and life sciences.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

Earlier, the Minister for Brexit Opportunities decried an Act of Parliament from 1972. There was a further Act of Parliament that year that also changed the face of England and Wales: the Local Government Act 1972. Much of that made sense for the delivery of public services, but the lords lieutenant have no role in local government. They are Her Majesty’s representatives in a county, and as a patron of the Friends of Real Lancashire, I can say that much damage was done to historic Lancashire. Will the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster look at restoring the lords lieutenant to cover the historic counties for ceremonial purposes, so that the Duke of Lancaster’s representative can cover all the Duke of Lancaster’s county palatine, from the Mersey to the Furness fells, and from the Irish sea to the Pennines?

[Steve Barclay]

I fear it is not just me who has to declare an interest in this—Mr Speaker himself may have to declare an interest. Any question that starts with reinforcing the county of Lancashire is extremely welcome. Before the hon. Gentleman’s siren call draws me on to the rocks of constitutional propriety, I would want to take advice as to what the interaction is with the Palace and other quarters that may have a view on this. I take this moment—I am sure the hon. Gentleman will agree—to pay tribute to the incredible work that the lords lieutenant do up and down the country. They are at the heart of so much civic activity within our constituencies and make a hugely valuable contribution through their work.